Life is full of pleasant surprises. I saw two of my granddaughters this week. I was in Tucson on a working vacation, finishing the proposal for my next book. I stayed at a resort and was sitting in the lobby reading a novel on Friday morning when I saw someone who looked a lot like the father of two of my grandchildren. He walked past and a few seconds later his twins, my granddaughters, walked by. Ava saw me and they all ran over.

They had come to Tucson with their dad for spring break, four weeks after we’d flown home with them from California, where we had gone for winter break (pictured above.) They were on their way to the airport to head home, but we had a few minutes of unexpected delight. The bellhops enjoyed watching our little reunion. Such moments must be celebrated. As I sat in the lobby, grateful, I thought of all of the times in my life when moments of joy have come unexpectedly.

It was almost midnight on a delayed flight to LaGuardia last year and I was the first passenger off the plane. An off-duty pilot who had been in the cockpit jump seat was walking behind me. He caught up with me as we left security. “I think I know who you are. My wife might have strongly recommended that I watch your TED talk yesterday.”

I said, “Yep – that’s me. I’m assuming your wife thought you had been a little insensitive to women?” Sheepishly he said, “Uh, yeah, that might have been the case.” We had a delightful little chat out to the curb where he caught his shuttle and I had a chuckle. He was quite good-natured about it all.

Then there was the time I was in Oregon, along the Columbia River, stopping in my rental car to look at one dramatic waterfall after another. At Multnomah Falls, the fourth stop I had unintentionally shared with folks in their rented Volvo station wagon, the husband said, “We’re going to have to stop meeting like this.” I laughed and we began to chat. I asked them where they were from and they said Cincinnati. I asked what part and they said Delhi. I asked what part of Delhi and they said, “Paradise Lane.”

I said, “Huh. Let me ask you a question. Did you just buy a road bike built for two, and you were out on it for the first time, riding a little wobbly, and you almost ran into a runner you passed?” They looked at me with great surprise and said, “Yeah, a few weeks ago that happened.” I said, “I know. I was the runner.” I had been teaching at a seminary in Cincinnati, staying with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, and went for an evening run at the same time this couple tried out their new bike. It was now two months later and here we were in Oregon. We talked for a while. They knew the seminary. Their pastor had attended there.

I was getting ready to speak for TED Women in 2018 when I heard one of the other speakers doing her dress rehearsal. I said to my son, “She’s from Appalachia, like, my neck of the woods in Appalachia.” TED speakers are from all over the world, so hearing a familiar accent is unusual. I went up to her when she finished and found out she was the fire chief in Huntington, West Virginia, my hometown. We were born in the same hospital. We were both doing TED Talks the next day. We’ve been friends ever since. I ran into her wife at the Charlotte airport Admiral’s Club a couple of months ago.

Back when I was in television I would frequently have people come up to me and tell me they had watched me on in the middle of the night. Their stories were always similar. “My wife was in the hospital and we were up during the night and we watched your show. It brought us a lot of peace.” Or, “My baby was colicky, and I couldn’t get any sleep and I watched you while I tried to calm her down.”

I was the on-air host of a quasi-religious nature show focused on those who were up in the middle of the night. We showed scenes of nature, told uplifting stories, and generally tried to encourage folks. You could tell it was Christian but you had no idea whether it was Catholic or Protestant, which was a good thing. I was the head writer. My favorite shoot was eighteen shows in Vienna, Austria on the church fathers and another eighteen on Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, and Mahler. We shot at a thirteenth century Cistercian monastery and the Vienna Opera House, among other stunning locations.

For me, those people coming up and telling me about watching our show in the middle of the night were precious encounters. I believe when I come to the end of my days, that will have been some of the most important work I ever did, soothing people who were struggling in the middle of the night.

I have had a lot of people come up to me in airports or on streets and thank me for my TED Talks too. They tell me the talk made them laugh, and cry. I love that. It means the talk made them feel something.  I remember an orthopedic surgeon at a conference at UCLA who said, “I always thought I was crazy until one of my female colleagues showed me your TED Talk.” I told her I had heard from a lot of women in male dominated fields (like orthopedic surgery) telling me the same thing.

Still, none of those match up to seeing my granddaughters unexpectedly in a resort in Tucson. After they left I cried, grateful for all of the blessings that come our way in this holy life, our short pause between two great mysteries.